Braveheart
With Gibson, Sophie Marceau, Patrick McGoohan, and Catherine McCormack.
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Braveheart has a gut-wrenching, bone-breaking, sword-thwacking verve. Like Wallace, Gibson seems charged with blood lust. This is manly, maximum-impact movie-making, full of brawn, brawls, decapitations, castrations, and men bleeding the ground red. The variety of weapons is astonishing, from buckets of bubbling pitch for burning skin to balls on chains for crushing craniums; from deer antlers for gouging eyes to gigantic spears for impaling cavalry horses. Wallace roils and inspires his troops with hoarse speeches about “freedom” and “last chances.” Full of adrenaline, they charge down the field toward their enemies like a football team after the kickoff. Their momentum and rage transform terror into what looks very like courage, and Gibson skillfully captures the impact as the armies crash into each other and fight and die.
Is Braveheart historically accurate? The narrator charges that “history is written by hangmen,” so probably not; but Gibson’s focus is on heroism, not history. According to the film, William Wallace is leading the Scots not to death but to freedom. When King Edward captures him and brings him to England to make an example of him, even during torture Wallace refuses to break; Gibson implies that Wallace’s refusal to compromise inspires the rebels to victory. Glorifying suffering, Gibson defines a hero by his ability to withstand pain. The film ends with an epiphany of masochistic suffering and self-sacrifice. Wallace is hung by the neck, stretched on the rack like a rubber band, and disemboweled, but he refuses to beg for mercy or betray his ideals. It certainly looks heroic to the audience, munching popcorn in a comfortable movie theater, divorced from his pain. This is martyrdom as victory.
The film’s final image is of men charging into battle, undergoing the age-old baptism into manhood via violence. When Wallace responds to an insult with “I do not lie, but I am a savage,” Gibson’s conviction makes it clear that both he and Wallace aspire to savagery. Wallace has been turned into a savage by English laws and repressions. By proudly proclaiming his savagery, he separates himself from the “civilized,” landed, educated classes who behave in such ordered, ruthless ways. William Wallace became a savage to remain free. Mel Gibson became a savage to make Braveheart: the brutality of the film is an affront to civilized standards of filmmaking. His movie shuns the aesthetic order, moons critical norms, and bludgeons subtlety.
Of course, Gibson does wear a kilt for the entirety of the film. Is there something about wearing a skirt that causes a man to question his manhood? That would explain the constant macho roughhousing in Braveheart: greetings come in the form of punches, not hellos or handshakes. Somebody is always getting up off the ground holding his sore jaw and saying, “Good to see you.” The battle scenes feature mooning and castration, and there’s much talk of penis size and kissing ass: “He could blow bolts of lightning from his arse,” “Put your head between your legs and kiss your arse,” “Prepare to have your arse kissed by a king,” and “The commoners will kiss his arse, and so we must.” It’s ironic but revealing that the only word spoken as often as “arse” in Braveheart is “freedom.”
